What does it mean for Signaturit to have received the Horizon2020 from the European Union?

In Signaturit we are very happy with the recent closing of our second investment round. In total, we have raised 2.8 million Euros thanks to the trust of prestigious investors, whose experience will help improve the company's management.

On this occasion, we also have the support of the European Union, which has awarded us with the second phase of the SME Instrument, a financing tool that is part of the Horizon 2020 program.

In addition to the good news of our second round, which has already been communicated by the mainstream Spanish media, in this post we want to focus on what this support of the EU means for the future of our company.

The European Union’s endorsement: what does it mean for Signaturit?

Since these services are valid in any EU country, this means that from Signaturit we are contributing to build a digital single market: our services help to eliminate barriers to electronic commerce and to electronic transactions between citizens, states and companies in the Union.

The EU’s Horizon 2020 program was launched to support projects with a high innovative potential from European companies, with the aim to boost their growth and expansion to other markets, inside and outside the borders of the Union.

The fact that the European Union has awarded us with the second phase of one of their financing instruments from the Horizon 2020 program, means that they are committed to us, and that they value us as a company capable of carrying out innovation for electronic trust services, to bring them to a superior level.

Why does the EU trust that Signaturit is capable of innovating in terms of electronic trust services?

After receiving Phase I of the Horizon2020 program, we applied for the second phase, as well as many companies throughout Europe. Of all the areas covered by the program - 22 areas in total, each one corresponding to a sector - we applied for the Securitysector.

“The specific objective of this area is to foster secure European societies in a context of unprecedented transformations and growing global interdependencies & threats, while strengthening the European culture of freedom and justice.”

Due to the strong competition, the selection criteria for the second phase of the Horizon2020 program are extremely demanding. In fact, only 2% of the companies that present for this phase manage to be selected.

Now Signaturit is part of this 2%. Thanks to our innovation project in the Security area, we received one of the highest scores in Europe: 14.45 points.

Our proposal includes encryption tools linked to blockchain, which allows us to reach an unbeatable level in terms of security for email communications.

In addition, in the product roadmap that we presented, we included the development of smart contracts to contribute even more to optimizing productivity in companies.

In sum, the technologies that we plan to implement will serve to further improve usability, reinforce security and increase the added value of our solutions.

“The contribution of the SME Instrument is doubly positive, since it represents a distinction from the European Union, the same entity that regulates our activity”.Juan Zamora, Co-Founder and CEO at Signaturit

Finally, the following factors have also contributed to make our project stand out above the rest:

We have a viable business plan and we know very well our business and sector.

We have a very capable and motivated team, with proven technical and management experience to carry out our project.

We have the technical resources and facilities to carry out our activity in the appropriate conditions.

As a result, the evaluators of the projects presented to Phase II of the Horizon2020 program considered that our advanced electronic signature solution has great innovative potential to improve competitivity between European companies: eliminating the manual processes of signing documents, introducing advanced technologies to close contracts and ensuring the security of electronic communications. And additionally, facilitating the contribution to conserve the environment by reducing paper consumption.

Incorporate new identification systems, including automatic reading and data extraction from European identity documents.

Expand and strengthen our third-party software integrations.

Signaturit´s second round in the media

In Spain, the news of our second investment round has been shared by the mainstream media in our country. We have included in this post a list of the news published by the most relevant publications, although there have been many more.

Conclusion

All of the team at Signaturit is working hard everyday to remain the company of reference within our sector in the European Union. Because of this, we are very happy for the support received by the EU - for being selected for the Horizon2020 program. This helps us at a financial level, of course, but for us it means mainly a recognition of our innovative approach to trust services.

We want to conclude this post thanking especially all of our customers, because they are the result of our efforts and their trust is key for Signaturit to advance.